The Strange Popularity of Rick Barry’s Wig

I like to occasionally review the Google searches that land on this blog, because it tells me a little bit about what people are thinking.

For instance, yesterday I got many hits that were derived from variations of the search “Pau Gasol true MVP”. So there’s a faction that agrees with me on that. There were also searches that were looking for “Magic better than Kobe”.

In the all-time search rankings, “Courtside Analyst” is first, followed closely by the misspelled “Courtside Anaylst”. The third most popular search is “Bucks Diary”, the old blog. All makes sense.

Fourth is “Fear the Deer t-shirt”, so it looks like I’m pimping that hard. Its the fifth most popular search that comes out of left field.

The fifth most popular search is a simple three word query “Rick Barry’s Wig”. It is an unbelievably popular topic. The problem is, I have zero information to share. Zero.

I think I mentioned it once when I was reviewing Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball, but I have nothing to add beyond what Simmons wrote. Simmons contention in BoB was that it was butt obvious from a simple comparison of team photos that Barry wore a wig in 1976. Big deal.

While I’m on the topic, though, Simmons in his book claims Barry was a substandard color commentator back in the 70s. I couldn’t disagree more. He may have been an arrogant jerk, and he may have innocently insulted Bill Russell with his “watermelon smile” comment, but listening to his work on Youtube, his sharp commentary was light years ahead of its time. He’s one of the better professional commentators I’ve ever heard.